Homage To The Master

“Let Us Continue the Journey Together”

Senior student Costantino Albini’s testimonial at the ceremony at the Great Stupa in Merigar on October 3, 2018, to say farewell to and honor Master Namkhai Norbu.

Dear Sisters, dear Brothers, dear Friends – also you who represent the institutions, today I will call you all only in this way: Friends.

On behalf of the entire Dzogchen Community and of the Namkhai family, I greet you and thank you for having come today, October 3rd 2018, to honor and to remember Chögyal Namkhai Norbu, an extraordinary man who has meant so much to those who have had the fortune and the privilege of knowing him, and who has brought about, to a lesser or greater extent, profound changes in our lives.

His birth name is Namkhai Norbu, which means in Tibetan “Jewel of the Sky”. For his colleagues at the Oriental University Institute of Naples he was professor Norbu.

For the Tibetan world, in which he is not only a cultural figure but also and above all a spiritual one, he carries the title of Chögyal, King of Dharma, that is, of the Teaching of the Buddha.

For us, his students, he was and forever will be, affectionately, Rinpoche: Precious Teacher.

It is not easy to talk comprehensively in a few minutes of the life of Chögyal Namkhai Norbu, a man of inexhaustible versatility and of a sagacious and multifaceted intellect, which I would call brilliant. His innumerable cultural, moral, and spiritual dimensions cannot be compared even to the sparkling and surprising facets of a diamond.

If today I were to attempt to talk about all the good that he has done, of all that he has given us and the world, the whole day would not suffice and I would certainly finish by omitting far more than I could succeed in mentioning.

I will limit myself to listing some aspects of his work on the cultural level: numberless publications document his continuous historical and archaeological research, particularly in archaic Tibet and in the ancient and forgotten kingdom of Shang Shung.His findings revolutionized ideas long held as certain by the scholarly Tibetological establishment.

As Professor of Tibetan and Mongolian Language and Literature at the University in Naples, he created, among other things, a system of Tibetan language transliteration that allowed his students to pronounce the Tibetan language perfectly.

An expert as well of Traditional Medicine and Tibetan Astrology, Chögyal Namkhai Norbu founded in 1991 here in Merigar, in the presence of His Holiness the Dalai Lama, the Shang Shung Tibetan Institute of Studies, to further knowledge of these disciplines and of Tibetan culture in general.